By: Jeff Beach (ND Monitor)
Anyone with concerns about handling the manure from 25,000 cows or other issues associated with what could become North Dakota’s largest dairy are now able to submit comments to the state.
The North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality opened a comment period Friday on the proposed Traill County facility to be operated by Minnesota-based Riverview Dairy.
The DEQ comment period runs through June 2 and includes a public hearing May 20 from 5-8 p.m. at the Hillsboro High School gym. Comments can be submitted through the DEQ website at deq.nd.gov/PublicNotice.aspx.
Riverview refers to the 25,000-cow project as Herberg Dairy, named for the township along the Red River and North Dakota Highway 200 southeast of Hillsboro where the dairy is planned.
Riverview already has a state environmental permit for its planned 12,500-cow dairy in Abercrombie Township north of Wahpeton in Richland County. The Dakota Resource Council is challenging that permit in court.
Marty Haroldson, permits program manager of the Division of Water Quality within the Department of Environmental Quality, and other staff members from the agency were in Hillsboro earlier this month as Riverview held an open house to answer questions from the public.
Haroldson said the plan for the Herberg Dairy is similar to Abercrombie, just on a larger scale.
“So as far as the technology, that’s all the same, it’s just scaled up,” Haroldson said. “Manure storage ponds are going to have a larger footprint, the barns are going to be a little bit bigger, a few more people working there.”
Haroldson said even after an environmental permit is issued, some aspects of the plan, such as manure management, can change, such as which farmers want to use Riverview’s manure as fertilizer or on which fields.
The plan “can be a living document,” Haroldson said, but Riverview would need to document the changes.
Two large questions are not addressed in the environmental plans for the dairy: Where will the water come from? Where will the milk go?
Large dairy farms like the ones proposed by Minnesota-based Riverview Dairy require huge quantities of water — 20 to 30 gallons of water per cow per day.
That would equal at least 700,000 gallons of water per day for the Traill County site and 350,000 gallons per day for the Richland County site.
The huge water need coupled with manure output from such a large dairy has some residents in Richland County concerned about the effect on aquifers and the water supply for residents.
Brady Janzen, who works on site development for Riverview Dairy, said during a recent open house on the Traill County project that the company’s dairies use a combination of collected water, such as gathering rain water that runs off barn roofs, surface water and ground water.
Riverview has a permit request under review with the North Dakota Department of Water Resources for the Richland County site northwest of Wahpeton for using surface water pulled from the Red River.
A comment period has already been held on that permit. Another comment period will open when the department announces its intent to approve or deny the permit.
Riverview is working with the East Central Rural Water District that serves Traill and Grand Forks counties for the site southeast of Hillsboro. Riverview has not yet applied for a water permit for that site.
The two dairies will use a lot of water and produce a lot of milk that would need to be processed. The Traill dairy would fill 22 tanker loads of milk – more than 170,000 gallons per day. The Richland site would produce about half that.
“We won’t begin building until we have a processor who has a need for that milk,” Janzen said.
Riverview already has several large dairies in western Minnesota but does not own its own creamery.
Janzen said Riverview has “kicked the tires” on building a processing plant.
Dairy farmers in the Bismarck-Mandan area, the traditional heart of North Dakota’s dairy industry, have been hurt by the closure of a creamery close to home.
A bill in the North Dakota Legislature aims to provide some financial incentives for dairy processing.
Amber Wood of the North Dakota Livestock Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes animal agriculture, is confident that the large dairies will mean more processing in the area.
“With dairy, it’s not the chicken or the egg, it’s the chicken and the egg,” Wood said. “You have to have processing to get cows and cows to get processing.”
While Wood is optimistic about dairy in the Red River Valley, others have concerns.
The same evening as Riverview’s Hillsboro open house, the Dakota Resource Council hosted a meeting in Fargo to raise awareness of the Abercrombie Dairy, which would be near the Red River, the drinking water source for Fargo residents.
“So why should you care? Because you’re 35 miles away,” said Madeline Luke, a volunteer with Dakota Resource Council whose main interest is in water protection, told the group.
Luke said by the time the public became aware of the Abercrombie Dairy, there was little time to review the permit application within the comment period. She cited concerns such as the number of fields where the manure will be applied that have drainage tile installed.
Luke was already reviewing the Herberg application on Friday.
Erik Olson has become a spokesperson for Abercrombie-area residents opposed to the dairy and addressed the Fargo meeting. The town of Abercrombie is less than four miles from the proposed dairy.
“Riverview was well into the process of planning and developing for years before the public was made aware,” Olson said. “We have minimal time to learn and educate ourselves on the effects that this megadairy would be having.
“To say that we were shocked is an understatement.”
The Dakota Resource Council has argued that one reason to throw out the permit is that there was no public hearing.
Riverview has filed a motion to dismiss the Dakota Resource Council lawsuit. A ruling on that motion is pending with a Burleigh County court.
